Arkansas multiple execution plan faces legal setbacks

CHICAGO: Arkansas’s plans to execute eight prisoners in just 10 days faced new setbacks on Friday, after a judge blocked use of a key lethal injection drug and one of the inmates got a top court reprieve. Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Wendell Griffen issued a temporary restraining order barring authorities in the southern US state from using vecuronium bromide, which the state had planned to use for its executions. The move came after drug distributor McKesson Corporation asked the court to ban the anesthetic. Griffen set a hearing for early Tuesday, one day after the state—which has not carried out an execution since 2005—had planned to begin the series of lethal injections.